I’m back at base after visiting Auckland yesterday to hold a workshop in the glorious Civic Theatre. We sought feedback from cultural organisations on NZLive.com, as well as ideas for future development. This workshop was preceded by one in Dunedin last week - lucky me, I even got to surf at St Clair beach at the end of the day!

We’ll post a summary of the outcomes after next week’s workshops in Christchurch and Wellington. Some trends are emerging: the new cultural funding guide is popular, and organisations are finding the admin tool easy to use. 

Some of the suggestions from participants included new features (such as event reviews, event photos and online exhibitions, itineraries for various locations, mapping that lets you see events on around you), improving the site navigation and providing data on the number of ‘views’ of organisations’ events entries. More on that to come.

Another area of interest for workshop participants has been how we are marketing NZLive.com. Getting the word out there about NZLive.com will bring more people to events.

 The majority of our marketing is online. We are running a Google Adwords campaign, as well as refining the website so that we appear high in Google search results. We send monthly newsletters to our approximately 10,000 subscribers.

Before Xmas, we developed a Myspace page, focusing on New Zealand music, as a gateway page for the Myspace community and to make contact with bands. This blog is also another channel for reaching consumers of cultural experiences.

We’re submitting items to a wide range of cultural magazines and newsletters to increase awareness of the site, as well as advertising in some festival brochures to capture the attention of those large audiences.

We’re also working with the interagency Cultural Diplomacy International Programme, led by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. This team is boosting New Zealand’s profile in Asia through a programme of cultural activities. And we might also take a look at Australia - more visitors come to New Zealand from there than anywhere else.

If you’re a cultural organisation or venue, you can help us promote NZLive.com by linking to the site and by displaying the flash, bright NZLive postcards at your place. Email us for more information.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under Marketing, NZLive.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.